Don't Spare Yourself! | Rabbi Haggai Lundin | Beit Midrash

Torah Portion and Tanach
Pinchas

קטגוריה משנית

The Holy Zohar explains that the name Pinchas is a combination of two words: Pen-chas. "Pen" means "lest"; "chas" means "will have mercy"; "Pen-chas" – "lest he have mercy." In a situation of falling and collapsing systems, there is a tendency to enter a position of self-pity. When the plague began in Jewish people, the reaction of the spectators to the catastrophe was one of weakness and helplessness – "and they were weeping at the entrance of the Tent of Meeting" (Balak 25, 6).

Precisely in the midst of despair, Pinchas' sun emerges, the prototype for a figure who knows how to act in moments of crisis. He did not spare himself or have mercy on those who were harmful to reality. He works decisively, accurately and without the dilution of the woke culture. The Sages describe (Baba Batra 109) the weak-minded Israelites who hated Pinchas to death; those who obviously wanted an immediate agreement with the Midianites that would abandon most of the people of Israel and the other hostages in the name of weakness and hedonism. They heard him address the U.S. Congress and turned green with envy that he reminded them of everything they were not.

In times of crisis, there is a tendency to spare and intensify the softness in the soul. There are those who tend to spare Israel’s enemies and want to provide aid to Gaza; there are those who tend to spare themselves and complain all day about the situation in the country. Right now, we need male and female Pinchases; figures who know how to act in the right way; to win with stamina, faith and optimism. Thank God that most of the Jewish people is like that.

The bad will pass
The good will prevail
With God's help.

Pinchas